For all of those joining me for the first time, welcome to the Return of the 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown here at Branded in the 80s! I had a blast last year, so again I’m counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. All of these monsters come straight from my vintage animation cel collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary (sort of cartoon-y) to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.
Today’s monster is only a monster in the most technical sense as he was a supernatural villain in the cartoon. In reality he’s more literally a cartoon character brought to life in a very Cool World-esque episode of the Real Ghostbusters titled “Who’re You Calling Two-Dimensional” (episode #25 to be exact.)
Winchester Wolf is one of the creations of Walt Fleischer, a legendary cartoonist in the universe of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon who mysteriously disappeared at the height of his popularity. The cartoonist is a combined homage to both Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, though he has much more in common with the work of Fleischer. In the episode the Ghostbusters are called out to the legendary animation studio (which resembles Disney World minus the rides) to investigate some spooky noises coming out of Fleischer’s old haunt (pardon the pun.) The guys are then sucked into a vortex and dropped into a “cartoon” world (how meta) of falling anvils, scheming anthropomorphized talking animals, and insane drops from precarious cliffs…
The world is ruled by Winchester Wolf, a disgruntled cartoon character villain with a bone to pick with Walt Fleischer. He kidnapped the cartoonist and has been torturing him with the same various dastardly cartoon clichés that were inflicted upon him by the cartoonist. The Ghostbusters end up teaming up with some of Fleischer’s more heroic creations in order to free the cartoonist and to escape the world.
Come back tomorrow for another Real Ghostbusters monster animation cel as I count down towards one of my favorites on Halloween day!
Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the Return of the 31 Days of Monsters countdown, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck, and I’m on the Facebook as well.) If you’d like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year’s Halloween blogging event…
